International IDEA organizes a BRIDGE TtF Workshop for Gender Specialists in Pretoria South Africa

In Pretoria, South Africa International IDEA organized a BRIDGE Train the Facilitators workshop for gender specialists from Africa and other parts of the world. The traiing was held from 27 September – 8 October 2010.

The TtF had a special “Gender and Elections” focus and highlighted the gender specific training materials in BRIDGE in order to familiarise the participants on the gender dimension of the curriculum. In addition as part of the course TtF participants were required to develop new BRIDGE materials. During this course we will ask participants to develop materials with a gender theme which will add to the quantity and quality of the existing gender training materials.

During the fist paired presentations in week 1 of the course the participants were allocated an activity from the Gender and Elections Module to facilitate. This approach allowed participants to really experience the materials from that Module and to give feedback to the organizers on the content and its relevance for them as gender specialists.

For the BRIDGE material writing materials exercise and the second paired presentations participants were required to write a new BRIDGE activity with a gender dimension. Participants developed some very rich and useful activities that can be added to the BRIDGE curriculum to strengthen gender as a crosscutting element.

The specific objectives of the BRIDGE TtF for gender specialists were:

• To create a pool of BRIDGE facilitators with gender specialisation that can utilise BRIDGE to further the aim of capacity-building on gender and elections in Africa and beyond.
• To create a community of practice in “Gender and Elections” within the BRIDGE network. 
• To strengthen the BRIDGE curriculum materials related to gender by having the gender specialist participants develop new BRIDGE materials during the TtF that can be incorporated into the BRIDGE materials

The TtF course was hosted by International IDEA’s Africa and Middle East Programme (AMEP) in Pretoria. It was facilitated by Margot Gould, International IDEA, Stina Larserud, International IDEA, Sibongile Zimemo, IDEA consultant and Dieudone Tshiyoyo, EISA:

The 19 participants came from a variety of national and international organizations involved in working on issues of gender and elections and democracy.

BRIDGE partners IFES and UNDP also participated in the TtF.

For more information please contact Margot Gould at International IDEA on e-mail m.gould@idea.int